If We Lived Here (6 page)

“I wish I were kidding,” Nick said. “I screwed up. And believe me, I’m paying for it.” He rubbed his temples, and for the first time that day Emma got a good look at her boyfriend. His skin was sallow, his eyes bloodshot and covered with a cloudy film. The part of Emma that wasn’t furious wanted to pull him into a comforting embrace.

“What happened to you exactly?” she asked.

“You know, alarm-clock trouble. Hey, look, a Krispy Kreme!”

“All right, I’ll fall for your very subtle sleight of hand.” As much as Emma had been fuming, and even as she suspected that Nick had done something that likely deserved her scorn, it seemed easier to let it go. “I’ll take a chocolate glazed, please.”

“One chocolate-glazed donut to go, and one bus ticket for the lady.”

“And one Dramamine.”

“Coming right up!”

 

The traffic was bumper-to-bumper, and Emma was trying to gaze beyond the window’s grimy streaks and concentrate on the horizon. It had taken nearly an hour to make it through the Holland Tunnel, and they’d spent the past forty-five minutes inching so gradually down the New Jersey Turnpike that it seemed like life was playing in slo-mo.

Emma glanced at her watch: two p.m., meaning their original train was just pulling in to Union Station in D.C. She pictured passengers gathering bags after a pleasant trip; she felt particularly resentful toward the two people who, due to the vacancies left by Emma’s and Nick’s absences, had probably sprawled out across double-seaters for naps.

The screen on Emma’s phone flashed
Landlady!,
which she’d inputted yesterday for Mrs. Caroline. She picked up: “Hey, Mrs. Caroline, how’s it going?” The man in front of Emma swiveled around to glare, which seemed unfair considering he’d spent the past half hour loudly recounting a synopsis of last week’s
Girls
to his seatmate.

“Listen, we need to talk.” Her tone was ominous. Emma was struck with the sinking feeling specific to knowing you’re about to get dumped; she realized she’d been half expecting this all along. “I’m going to have to rescind my offer on the apartment.”

Emma let her head fall against the dirty window beside her. She closed her eyes.

“Hello, are you there? Emma?”

“Yes.” Her voice was a whisper. Nick placed a hand on her shoulder, scrunching his face into a look of concern. Emma shrugged him off.

“I know we agreed, but I’ve had a funny feeling about it ever since. It’s been affecting my sleep, and I’m someone who needs to get my eight hours. Another couple came by to see the apartment. They’re newlyweds. She’s a law professor and he makes a great income as some kind of engineer for Google, and—”

“Enough, please stop.” There were many things Emma wanted to say to Mrs. Caroline—how she was a bad person; and how the last thing Emma wanted to hear about was the wealthier, more successful, more committed couple who were her lucky new tenants; and how it was ridiculous to ask people to refer to you as “Mrs.” along with your first name. But she also didn’t want to waste another moment in conversation with her.

Click.
Emma hung up. She yearned to thrust her hand through the glass beside her, then stick her head out and drink in the fresh air. Also, she wanted to talk to her mother. But because of the intercontinental time difference, they always made Skype dates, catching up once a week at predetermined times with that weird computer screen delay. Her mom’s phone didn’t even take international calls.

“What does Annie want now?” Nick said. “I hope you told her it’s too late to get the tablecloths monogrammed according to each guest’s seating placement.”

Emma didn’t even attempt a smile. “The apartment’s out.” She didn’t bother filling him in on the reason. Meanwhile, the man in front of her jerked his seat back to recline fully.

“Oh, Emma.” Nick pulled her into his arms as best as he could in the cramped two-seater. “I admit I’m sort of relieved. That woman was a nutcase.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I know you’re disappointed. But we still have plenty of time.”

“I guess.” Emma did the math—they had three weeks until their respective leases were up. But in three days’ time Nick would be back in school and return home an exhausted lump each afternoon; evenings would be needed for planning and parent calls. Finding their future apartment, Emma sensed, would be a burden entirely hers to bear.

“Slam.” Nick nudged her arm. She was unresponsive. “Come on, Em, slam.”

“Fine. Slap,” she said, not thrilled to be playing Scrabble Slam. The game involved taking turns changing one letter in a word in order to create a new one. Emma usually enjoyed it.

“Slip.”

“Slim.”

“Slit.”

“Shit.” Emma said it loudly, and the man in front of her shot her a look of disdain. This from someone who had recently eliminated all of her legroom.

“Shit is right,” Nick said. “This trip is the worst. Shin.” Nick made a motion to kick the offending passenger.

“It is. Thin.” Emma sucked in her stomach.

“At
this
rate, we won’t arrive until halfway through the rehearsal dinner.
Thus,
I wish you hadn’t been so irresponsible and slept through our original train.” Nick grinned.

“Oh, shush.”

“
Shush
doesn’t work, Em. You can’t add two letters.”

Emma elbowed her boyfriend, then reached for her vibrating phone. It was her brother, Max, no doubt calling to offer his weekly Shabbat Shalom tidings. Emma wasn’t up for it, so she let the call ring through to voicemail, then dialed to hear the message. The sharp sopranos of her niece and nephew, Aimee and Caleb, accosted Emma’s eardrums. They were singing some Hebrew school song. Aimee’s lisp was cute, but otherwise the song made Emma roll her eyes: “On Shabbat we are happy, we are bursting full of joy! For Shabbat is a festive day for every girl and boy!”

Emma worried that her sister-in-law, Alysse, was the type of mother who wouldn’t allow her children to act anything but happy. Here the kids were, ages three and four, singing about their joy on Shabbat, but Emma wondered whether they even knew what the holiday was. She also thought it was no coincidence that Max called her every week after synagogue. His voice interrupted the children’s on the message: “Hey, Emmy, I hope you’re having a great weekend at the wedding. We just heard a very moving sermon from Rabbi Shimon and it made me think of you. Shabbat Shalom!”

Emma noted her brother’s put-on Hebrew lilt. “The Shabbat police, calling to check in,” she said to Nick.

“I think it’s nice,” he replied. Nick had been raised in one of those laid-back Unitarian homes, and so had no idea about all the subtle, guilt-inducing tactics Jewish families employed. But while most of Emma’s Jewish friends shouldered heaps of guilt from their mothers, she found it disturbing that for her it was her brother, just three years older than she, who had taken it upon himself to be the family’s religion monitor. Emma suspected a lot of it was for show, some kind of “keeping up with the Jacobsons” thing. Even their mom, whose business was selling kosher-style pastries to the Jewish Madrileños, poked fun at Max’s and Alysse’s insistence on calling on a Christian neighbor to flip their light switches on and off during Shabbat. If all that weren’t bad enough, it made Emma seethe that, back when their parents had broached the idea of selling their house and shipping out to Europe, Max had pounced; within six months, he’d bought them out and moved himself into the house Emma had grown up calling home. All of the doorframes now bore colorful mezuzahs that Alysse had picked up at JCC craft fairs, and Emma’s niece now slept in her old bedroom, redecorated in Alysse’s matchy-matchy aesthetic. A giant poster of Noah’s ark replaced the photo collage Emma had updated through high school and college and then pleaded with her parents to preserve like a museum display after she’d moved away.

Emma and Nick did occasionally trek up to Westchester to spend Jewish holidays with her brother’s family. And when she didn’t let herself get worked up over Alysse’s pointed comments—“Isn’t it refreshing to get out of the city and breathe clean air for a change?” “By the time I was your age, the only thing on my mind was babies, babies, babies. It’s funny how people are different.”—Emma did find herself comforted by the old rituals. They gathered around the family room, which Max must’ve lobbied to keep as it was before, and lit the candles. They sang the same songs she and Max had sung as kids, the ancient tunes bursting up like buds from their childhood, lovelier for their deep roots. They tore off chunks of the same fluffy challah from Weintrob’s, sipped at the same syrupy Manischewitz wine, and then took turns sharing a highlight from the past week and a hope for the coming week. This last tradition was a new one, created by Max for his family, and it was sweet, something Emma could imagine Aimee and Caleb might repeat decades down the line with their own future families. Emma didn’t go in for any of the God stuff, and she’d yet to meet anyone who was anything but horribly scarred from their childhood Hebrew school experience, but she could see the appeal of this weekly touchstone, the ritual coming together of family for an official day of rest.

Considering Max’s Shabbat ritual made Emma wonder what kinds of rituals she and Nick would create now that they’d be living together. When Annie had moved to an old apartment, she’d brought in a feng shui expert to perform a move-in ceremony with incense and yoga and, much to Emma’s amusement, Annie had followed the instructions and repeated the procedure each full moon thereafter. Now Annie and Eli practiced mindful meditation each morning. (Annie was flexible in her spirituality.) Emma knew her parents had a bimonthly tradition of compiling care packages of sweets and Spanish tchotchkes to send to their kids, their intercontinental expression of parental love. And Genevieve had once confessed to a post-one-night-stand ritual of flooding her room with musky incense and Drake tunes in order to seal in what she called her “sexual mojo.”

Emma began dreaming up new traditions for her and Nick—a weekly Scrabble tournament at the breakfast nook overlooking Grand Army Plaza, or a shelf in each of the his-and-hers closets where they’d leave little trinkets for each other. But wait. She bolted up in her seat, remembering that that particular home had vanished. She and Nick were back to square one. Acid anxiety swirled through Emma’s stomach. She breathed deeply, willing herself to feel a hint of excitement, the thrilling potential born of the unknown.

The bus jolted forward and a fishy stench invaded the air. Emma stared stubbornly ahead, gaze fixed on the horizon, and thought,
We’re almost there, we’ve got to be almost there
.

Chapter
6

“E
m, it’s time.”

Emma blinked awake, disconcerted by the darkness. She had that half-relieved, half-unsettled feeling of jolting out of a nightmare: In her sleep, she and Nick had been setting up a new apartment, laying down masking tape to indicate which half of the space belonged to each of them, and then Emma had discovered her closet was jammed full of her teenage clients, all freaking out about the SATs.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Eight. I called Eli and they know we’re running behind. We’ll rush to the hotel—”

“Let’s just head right to the dinner. We’re already so late. We can pop into a bathroom and change.”

But when their cab pulled up to the restaurant and Nick and Emma raced in with their bags, a distracted concierge directed them left instead of right, not to the bathrooms but straight into the reception hall. They pushed through a set of double doors and, both still in their hoodies and jeans, found themselves gaping at hundreds of Eli and Annie’s guests, everyone suited up and cocktail-attired, chic and tailored and so very appropriate.

“Ah, Nick and Emma finally make an appearance!” The words echoed through the ballroom in surround sound. “I was just discussing you two.” It was Connor, Eli’s best man, perched on a platform at the front of the room and speaking into a microphone. Hundreds of heads swiveled to face the entrance, where Emma and Nick stood frozen. Emma waved awkwardly, searching in vain for Annie’s face to gauge her friend’s level of fury.

Connor went on: “I was saying how if it weren’t for you guys, there’d be no Eli and Annie, and none of us would’ve had to schlep all the way down to humid, hazy D.C. and have the last weekend of our summers ruined.” Polite laughter all around. Emma wished Connor would stop pointing in their direction; half the crowd was still eyeing her, probably noticing her unwashed hair, maybe even detecting a faint stink of Greyhound.

“So what’s with the late entrance?” Connor continued, a glint in his eye. Connor was known as a jokester among Nick’s and Eli’s college friends, but what others regarded as “edgy” humor Emma found to be plain not nice. “I hear you guys are moving in together after only—what?—three or four years? Nice work stalling, Nick. You should’ve offered Eli here some tips. Looks like you could’ve used even more stalling tonight to pull together some decent outfits. Eli, man, next time you get married, make sure to write ‘No sweatshirts’ on the invitations. Apparently that wasn’t clear. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let’s raise our glasses to our maid of honor and her boyfriend, fashionably late in not-so-fashionable attire, and to all of you gathered here tonight, and of course to the couple of the hour, who knew within months that they were meant to be together forever. Hear, hear, to Annie and Eli!
L’chaim!
”

No sympathizer surfaced to hand Nick and Emma drinks. So, as all of the room’s flutes raised and everyone sipped at champagne, the two of them stood in the doorway empty-handed. Emma tried to cover her humiliation with a smile and, noticing her fingers clenched into fists, unfurled them. She whispered to Nick, “Is he drunk or just awful?”

“It’s hard to say. Probably both.”

“Can we escape now?”

“Yes, let’s go.”

They found the bathroom, and were quiet as they changed from bus-casual to party attire. The halter dress Emma had chosen because it accentuated her tanned shoulders now looked off in the mirror, like she was playing dress-up in a big sister’s closet; though she supposed it didn’t really matter, since everyone had already seen her in ratty jeans. Her hair was frizzy and her eyes kept tearing up, making it difficult to apply mascara.

“Em, don’t listen to anything Connor says. He’s never in his life had a girlfriend for more than three weeks. He’s just jealous of people in happy relationships.”

“He’s an asshole is what he is.”

“He probably spent the rest of the speech ribbing each and every other person in the room. It’s just his style.”

“Charming. I can’t believe you’re friends with that guy.”

“
Was
friends with him. Back in college, ages ago. He’s not
my
best man.”

“Yeah, because you’re not getting married, because you’re apparently so skilled at stalling me.” Emma muttered it under her breath with more conviction than she felt.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, never mind. Come on, let’s go face the music.”

Emma was angry, although unclear over who or what was its target. She wanted desperately to talk to Annie to sort things out, but spotting her best friend across the room, Emma saw she was blocked three bodies deep by well-wishers. She and Nick had missed the dinner, and the only available chairs were at a table of old ladies. They took their seats amid a cloud of perfume, and Emma attacked the dessert, shoveling down two slabs of carrot cake to feed both her hunger and her hurt. “Is someone eating for two, perhaps?” asked the most shrunken of the ladies, her arthritic talon tapping at Emma’s shoulder. “Or is this just the hearty appetite of a growing girl?” Emma silently mouthed a response, cruelly wishing the woman might believe her hearing to blame for the noiselessness. She reached for another piece of cake.

Emma was creating waves with her fork in the frosting, practically daring her seatmates to scold her for playing with her food, when she heard the opening beats to Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” sound through the speakers. She looked up, and there was Annie looking right at her, beckoning her and Nick. Emma nudged Nick up to the stage.

“Attention, everybody, this here is my amazing maid of honor, Emma, and her dashing beau, and look, don’t they clean up nice?” Annie paused for the applause, urging Emma to curtsy. “Ems has been my friend since forever. It’s thanks to her that I made it through school, since she let me cheat off her pretty much all the way through. That’s what friends are for, right? And then she was
this
close to becoming Dr. Emma Feit, Ph.D., but I of course convinced her to jump ship and come keep me company in Manhattan instead. Anyway, something you may not know is that these two have so kindly agreed to share their big day with Eli and me. See, tomorrow marks the three-year anniversary of when Emma and Nick met, in a room much like this one, at a wedding kind of like this one, only less classy and perfect, of course.”

Emma leaned in to the mike. “She can only say that because that bride’s not here.” Both had lost touch with the childhood friend since her wedding three years ago.

“Anyway, Emma and I were dancing to this very song when we spotted him, this dashing, blue-eyed guy at the bar. Emma ditched me on the dance floor to go find her prince, and the rest is history. So here’s to you guys,
mazel tov!
” Annie pecked the cheeks of both Emma and Nick, and Emma smiled even though her friend’s version of that night wasn’t quite accurate. The music pumped louder, and Eli swooped in to spin his bride to be. Other couples began dotting the dance floor, and Nick took Emma’s waist. As Eli dipped his fiancée, Annie winked at Emma and mouthed the lyrics about being sorry she couldn’t afford a Ferrari.

Emma crooned back halfheartedly, declaring herself not an Xbox but an Atari. She dropped her head onto Nick’s shoulder, blocking out her flitting friend. There was something very different about singing this song with Annie when it had come out years ago—back then, belting out their bitterness at being broke and living in wretched apartments and regularly freaking out about their bank balances—and singing it together now, the night before Annie’s hundred-thousand-dollar wedding to her financier fiancé.

“Are you okay?” Nick asked.

“Just hold me, please.” Emma sang along to the chorus, delighting in the fact that for the moment it seemed socially acceptable to be yelling out expletives at a fancy party.

 

In the cab back to the hotel, Emma slouched against Nick and watched the car’s clock strike 11:59. “Happy almost-anniversary, babe. Remember that night we first met?”

“Barely. I do remember you got me wasted, and then I made an idiot of myself in front of my family.” It was true. Nick, whose second cousin had been the groom at that wedding, had moonwalked across the dance floor and crashed right into his parents.

“I’d been watching you all night. Your Hora was hilarious.”

“Are you joking? I’m a pro at that dance—it’s just like the grapevine.”

“Whatever you say, babe. And then I saw you in a corner, scribbling on all those napkins. I thought you must’ve been some kind of lunatic. Or a detective, or something.”

“I was lesson planning, Em. I know you Jews all love to have your weddings over Labor Day weekend so you can do it on a Sunday night and avoid Shabbat, but it’s rough going for a teacher, partying right before the start of the school year.”

“Oh, poor you. I remember I went over to talk to you, and you started in on this made-for-TV crap about how inspirational your job was. I thought I’d never heard so much B.S., which is saying a lot considering I was working in P.R.”

“You were not very nice about it, actually.”

“Aw, baby.” Emma squeezed his hand. “But then I had the genius idea to challenge you to a multiplication tables race, which I’d always dominated in grade school. Then you got to see what a smarty-pants I was.”

“We tied, as I remember it.”

“No way.”

“Yes way, Em. And you were so turned on by my brilliant math skills that you hopped directly into bed with me.”

“Correction, my friend: It was the other way around. I couldn’t fend you off.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure. By the time I woke up, you’d disappeared. I assumed you’d sobered up, decided I wasn’t as cute as you’d thought the night before, and fled.”

“But in the end, you couldn’t get rid of me.” Emma nestled her head into the nook of Nick’s shoulder, and remembered back to that morning after the hookup. She’d woken up queasy—she never did shots, but something about Nick had driven her to order several—and she’d glanced at the guy in the bed, snoring softly, his face slack with sleep. She’d dreaded his awakening, worrying he might look at her with scorn or triumph or sarcasm or some other equally distasteful emotion, fearing that what she’d imagined as sparkly and special the night before might dissolve in the light of day.

Although she’d hated to admit it, Emma had still been feeling the weight of her doctoral studies at the time. She’d flashed on Wharton’s novel
The Age of Innocence,
and felt herself to be the Ellen Oleska character, scandalizing society with her loose ways. Emma had winced to imagine how she and Nick had behaved the night before, and what people must’ve been saying about her that morning. Because of course the girl was always blamed. Remembering the book’s plot—how the free-spirited Ellen returns to Europe shamed and alone, while the object of her desire remains proudly protected in his proper marriage, unscathed in the eyes of society—Emma had quickly dressed and ducked out, skipping brunch. Resolving to act more appropriately the next time she met a guy she liked, she’d pledged to forget all about the previous night, and Nick along with it.

Of course, Emma hadn’t been able to excise Nick and his ocean-y eyes from her mind. Then Annie called to say she’d snagged the phone number of “that hookup guy” for her at the brunch, and reassured Emma that she was crazy to think anyone cared about what she’d done or whom she’d done it with the previous night. Emma demanded the number and memorized it on the spot. The next day she and Nick were strolling through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, seeking inspiration for a unit on
The Secret Garden
for his class. It was in the bonsai enclave where Emma had first felt she was falling in love.

“Em? We’re here, come on. You keep falling asleep on me today.”

“Huh?” Nick was tugging at her arm, urging her out of the cab. The next thing Emma remembered, she was dreaming of bonsais, those miniature trees so delicate in their pots, their wire-thin branches splaying out into bright bursts of bloom.